Saturday morning Clementine the dog was being a little restless, so I sat down on her loveseat to see if a little focused affection would calm her down. This loveseat is a piece of rented furniture that we’ve long-since bought and paid for, which is a little galling, since it’s such an ugly thing. It’s got scratchy yellowy-black fabric, and we’d put it out on the curb for the garbagemen in a heartbeat except the dog has claimed it as her own. If she curls up in its smelly cushions or stands on its doghair-covered arms, she’s on top of the world. Saturday, though, the loveseat wasn’t having its usual effect. And when I sat down, Clementine’s restlessness boiled into action. She jumped off the loveseat and then back up and then down again. I was looking at her in my best, “Explain yourself, Dog” manner when I caught her surreptitious glances into the corner cushion and I knew. “Ohhh, you’ve got Treasure buried here.”

These Treasures are usually big, chunky dog-chew bones that she doesn’t feel like working on when we give them to her. So she takes them firmly in her mouth and starts trotting off on a big hunt for the perfect place to “bury” them — shoving them under a cushion or pillow somewhere, pushing things around with her nose until she’s certain all the boogey-men will be thrown off the trail, and then reclaiming them at some later time with a look of ferocious pride.

What’s surprising is the change that comes over Clementine when one of these ordinary chew-bones becomes a Treasure. When we give it to her, it’s just a thing, but as soon as she takes it away, it acquires a quality of Preciousness. She suddenly gets possessive and a little bit sneaky. She’s never inclined toward anything aggressive, but she’ll eye us suspiciously if we’re too close when she’s burying these things, and if we take the bone from her, she jumps around with a slightly wild-eyed outrage. “Hey! Mine! No! You’re a bad dog!” It’s the only time she ever has a sense of personal property.

Since I don’t actually want her chew bone (I’m funny that way), I hand it to her. She clomps onto it and starts a circuit of the house. I holler up the stairs to Greg to close the bedroom door — please, Clementine, not another nasty chew-bone stuck under my pillow like a misbegotten gift for the tooth-fairy — and so after pacing back and forth upstairs, she comes back down with a slightly harried look. She goes into my newly organized office where — I’m proud to say — she found no place to bury a bone. Kitchen? No. Foyer? No. Laundry room, dining room, den? No, no, no.

Now, Clementine is just a hound. She’s not some rocket scientist dog who has the ability to hold onto a thought for a long time. Though the Treasure had briefly been an object of devotion, the fact that it presents a problem without an answer makes her lose focus, which makes the chew-bone lose Preciousness. And the next thing you know, she sighs, plunks it down in her favorite spot, and just starts chewing on it. Which brings a certain satisfaction, since it is actually what the manufacturers (and Clem’s humble owners) had in mind for it all the time. But there’s a loss in value. She doesn’t get sneaky about a bone she’s actually chewing on. She doesn’t get possessive. It’s not a Treasure anymore — now it’s just Stuff.

This can be a good phase in the relationship between dog and bone actually, because once she stops carrying the silly things around and trying to stuff them into furniture, she will sometimes sit down and happily crunch away on them for the five minutes or so it takes to chew them up completely.

But it’s also a tricky time, and I sensed that her diligence was waning. Her attention wanders, she starts to eye other things that seem more promising. And over the course of a couple minutes, the object is devalued yet again. It’s not even Stuff now — it’s just Junk. She gets up and stretches, sniffs the bone as if she’s trying to remember what it’s doing there, and saunters off.

I know what this means. She won’t come back to it later. It’ll never be buried again like a Treasure, and it won’t be put to use like Stuff. Now it’s just Junk, and it’ll stay in the same spot she left it until I pick it up and toss it out.

Treasure, Stuff and Junk. Knowing the difference between them is something I try to do all the time, especially as I try to run the house and business without them running me. We don’t have a lot of space to spare, and so I’ve had to learn the vast importance of getting Junk out of the house. Today’s Precious Object is tomorrow’s White Elephant (if that expression is too old-fashioned to be understood, go HERE). The treasures can bring you joy, but they can also make you snappish, greedy and ungrateful. Stuff, on the other hand, can be useful, but you have to deal with it, make time for it, make room for it, and you have to put it to use. If you don’t, it’s in danger of becoming Junk, and then it just takes up space and energy without giving anything back. Junk you have to get rid of, or it will start slowly suffocating you. Knowing what’s what seems like it actually matters.

Because of course, no one’s out there to pick up my discarded chew-bones.